X-FILES, THE: BEYOND THE SEA (TV)
Summary
One in this series of science fiction dramas about FBI agents Mulder and Scully and their investigations into "unsolvable" cases involving paranormal phenomena. The story begins as Scully says goodbye to her parents, who have come over for Christmas dinner. That night she awakens from her sleep to see her father silently mouthing words to her. Just then she receives a phone call from her mother announcing that her father suffered a massive coronary and died just an hour ago. Meanwhile, in Jackson University in Raleigh, North Carolina, a teenage couple is making out in their car when they are kidnapped by an unknown assailant. Mulder investigates the kidnapping at FBI headquarters; the victims are named Liz Hawley and Jim Summers, both aged 19. The kidnapping is similar to a similar incident that happened exactly a year ago at Duke University, where two students were kidnapped, tortured, and left for dead. A serial killer named Luther Lee Boggs is scheduled to be executed in a week, but claims he has information about the kidnappings and wants to offer it in exchange for commuting his sentence down to life imprisonment. Boggs claims he is psychic and can communicate with the dead due to an earlier execution attempt that was stopped at the last minute. Mulder is the one who put him in jail, and is skeptical as to the authenticity of Boggs’s psychic abilities. He believes Boggs is the one orchestrating the kidnappings and is offering to “solve” the case for a lighter sentence. Boggs has asked to see Mulder personally; Mulder suggests Scully take time off because of the death of her father, but she wants to keep working. Scully and her family attend the funeral of her father, wherein his ashes are scattered out to sea while the song “Beyond the Sea” plays. Her mother informs her that the song was playing when he proposed to her. Scully wonders whether her father was proud of her despite her decision not to go into medicine. Later, Mulder and Scully visit Boggs in prison. Mulder hands him a torn piece of clothing from an evidence bag and Boggs apparently starts having visions of the location of the kidnapped teens. Mulder reveals that the torn piece of clothing was his and has no connection to the case, convincing him Boggs is a fraud. As he and Scully leave, Boggs starts singing “Beyond the Sea” and calls Scully “Starbuck,” her father’s nickname for her, which disturbs her greatly. Mulder recommends Scully take a rest. As Scully drives back to her motel, she notices visual clues on the roadside which correspond to Boggs’s vision. Investigating further, she finds the area that Boggs described, now empty. Later, Mulder meets her back at their motel room and confirms that a bracelet she found at the scene belonged to Hawley. Scully confesses that she used Boggs’s description to find the place and Mulder is angry, yelling at her for walking into what could have been a trap. Mulder realizes that Scully is vulnerable after the death of her father and they talk about it. The next day, Mulder arrives at the prison with a fake news article announcing the recovery of the missing teenagers. He hopes to use it to get Boggs to call his accomplice on the outside. However, when Boggs is given phone privileges, he instead calls Mulder and taunts him. Scully convinces Mulder to cooperate with Boggs, at least temporarily. They sit down with Boggs, who describes his vision of the kidnappers’ hideout. Just before they leave, Boggs issues a cryptic warning about a “white cross.” Mulder and Scully lead the FBI on a raid on the hideout. They find Hawley but the kidnapper escapes with Summers, shooting Mulder in the process. When Scully goes to help him, she notices some of his blood has spilled on a piece of scaffolding resembling a white cross. Mulder is taken to the emergency room. Hawley identifies the kidnapper as a man named Lucas Jackson Henry, whom Scully intuits is carrying out his kidnappings and murders because of an accident that claimed the lives of his girlfriend and mother years ago. She discovers that the police suspect Henry was Boggs’s partner in his own murders. Scully confronts Boggs, claiming the entire thing is a revenge scheme against Mulder. She swears that if Mulder dies, she’ll see to it that Boggs does as well. Boggs points out that it was she who believed him. She asks to speak with her father and Boggs momentarily complies before insisting he be given life imprisonment, fearful of returning to the execution chamber. He describes his experience in the chair the first time and recounts feeling the souls of his victims haunting him. The prison warden is unwilling to make any sort of deal with Boggs, and Mulder also advises against it. She goes back to Boggs and tells him that a deal has been made and he describes Henry’s new locale. However, Boggs knows that Scully is lying to get him to cooperate and issues her a warning about not “going to the devil.” Scully and the FBI get to Henry just before he can kill Summers; Scully shoots him and gives chase. She corners him in a room with a large devil image painted on a wall. Henry falls through a weak floorboard to his death, seemingly confirming Boggs’s warning. Scully speaks to Boggs again, now convinced that he did not orchestrate the kidnappings. He promises to deliver her father’s final message to her at his execution. However, Scully does not attend. She provides rationale to Mulder as to why she was so willing to believe Boggs, retreating into her usual skepticism. Scully is, by her own admission, “afraid to believe,” but seems to understand that her father would have been proud of her and doesn’t need to communicate with him. Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: FOX
- DATE: January 7, 1994 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:50:00
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:54729
- GENRE: Drama, fantasy/science fiction
- SUBJECT HEADING: Drama, fantasy/science fiction; Women's Collection - Drama; Asian American Pacific Islanders Collection
- SERIES RUN: Fox - TV series, 1993-2002; 2016-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Chris Carter … Executive Producer, Created by
- R. W. Goodwin … Co-Executive Producer
- James Wong … Co-Executive Producer, Writer
- Glen Morgan … Co-Executive Producer, Writer
- Howard Gordon … Supervising Producer
- Alex Gansa … Supervising Producer
- Paul Rabwin … Co-Producer
- Paul Barber … Co-Producer
- Larry Barber … Co-Producer
- Joseph Patrick Finn … Line Producer
- David Nutter … Director
- Mark Snow … Music by
- David Duchovny … Cast, Agent Fox Mulder
- Gillian Anderson … Cast, Agent Dana Scully
- Brad Dourif … Cast, Luther Lee Boggs
- Don Davis … Cast, Captain William Scully
- Sheila Larkin … Cast, Margaret Scully
- Lawrence King … Cast, Lucas Henry
- Fred Henderson … Cast, Agent Thomas
- Don Mackay … Cast, Warden Joseph Cash
- Lisa Vultaggio … Cast, Liz Hawley
- Chad Willett … Cast, Jim Summers
- Kathrynn Chisholm … Cast, Nurse
- Randy Lee … Cast, Paramedic
- Len Rose … Cast, E.R. Doctor